Comments
What are my goals? And what did I find?
I thought a retreat that happened before EAGxPhilippines was a good opportunity to talk to a bunch of non-Western EAs, so I ran a focus group session as a way to solicit people’s experiences of CCIs in EA settings.
The rules I enforced during that time were:
* indicates that I was the one who initially shared the experience, and hence may be biassed to get people to talk more about it.
| Experiences | Supporting details |
| * EAs in "perceived-to-be-lower-status-cultures" [e.g., non-Western] have to put much more effort to be included in spaces where EAs in "perceived-to-be-higher-status-cultures" [e.g., Western] occupy. OTOH, EAs in "perceived-to-be-higher-status-cultures" have to put much less effort to be included in spaces where "perceived-to-be-lower-status-cultures" occupy. | 3 people gave supporting anecdotal evidence.
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| * EAs from "perceived-to-be-higher-status-cultures" hijacking (probably unintentionally) norms in spaces that belong to EAs from "perceived-to-be-lower-status-cultures" |
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| EAs usually find the opportunity cost of travelling to far away conferences very high. This makes EAs in far away countries less likely to interact with other EAs in other parts of the world. | 1 person gave supporting anecdotal evidence |
| Pressure to move to an EA hub. | 1 person gave supporting anecdotal evidence.
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| Cause prioritisation done by folks are influenced by their location |
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| Folks in Asia think they’re not a great fit for EA if they’re not working on AI safety | 1 person gave supporting anecdotal evidence |
| Culture of reducing meat consumption can be seen as untrustworthy in certain cultures | 1 person gave supporting anecdotal evidence |
| Non-westerners with English as their second language apologise more often when speaking in English, compared to Westerners with English as their second language | 1 person gave supporting anecdotal evidence |
| There are differences in how punctuality is viewed depending on culture | 1 person gave supporting anecdotal evidence |
| * There’s a trend of non-Western people wanting to be more Westernised for many reasons (e.g., status, economic, cultural, romantic, etc). | 1 person gave supporting anecdotal evidence
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| Some non-westerners write long emails to pitch for more funding support, whereas some Westerners write shorter emails | 1 person gave supporting anecdotal evidence |
| Experiences | Supporting details |
| EAGx’s are great | 2 people gave supporting anecdotal evidence |
| Great to learn from other cultures regarding best practices, and even work-life boundaries. | 1 person gave supporting anecdotal evidence |
| More emails and less calls from Western folks than non-Western folks | 1 person gave supporting anecdotal evidence |
| Encouraged to create materials or host meetings in their own language instead of English, even if it meant English-speaking folks couldn’t participate | 1 person gave supporting anecdotal evidence |
| CEA recorded some mock situations with people role-playing bad situations--that was helpful. | 1 person gave supporting anecdotal evidence |
| There’s a good culture of trying to pronounce non-Western names correctly | 1 person gave supporting anecdotal evidence |
| Experiences | Supporting details |
| Imposter syndrome makes people feel less included in EA. | 1 person gave supporting anecdotal evidence
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| Hard to engage in EA due to monocultural subcultures. | 1 person gave supporting anecdotal evidence
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| Community builders have limited funding if they’re not focusing on AI safety | 1 person gave supporting anecdotal evidence |
| Power or status imbalances between EAs | 1 person gave supporting anecdotal evidence
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